


A Bad Case of the Jitters

by INeverHadMyInternetPhase



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Cuddles, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, M/M, Nerves, according to your preference, can be read as platonic or romantic, sort of comfort?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 14:17:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8211500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INeverHadMyInternetPhase/pseuds/INeverHadMyInternetPhase
Summary: Phil has night-before jitters with the release of tatinof coming tomorrow, but Dan is there to comfort him, as ever.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little piece of plotless fluff because I was feeling it

“I don’t think I’m at all ready for this.”

Phil was hovering outside the door to Dan’s room, his lower lip caught between his teeth and his hands curled up into fists by his sides. He was standing on the balls of his feet, constantly bouncing around as if he wasn’t quite sure where his limbs should be going or what he should be doing with himself.

Dan recognised that look.

Dan, thankfully, had lived with Phil for enough years by now that he recognised a bad case of nerves when he saw them. Phil was eternally grateful for that. He’d never had a housemate – or partner, or best friend, or _Dan_ \- who knew him well enough to read exactly what he needed in any given moment, but Dan had always had that uncanny ability of saying exactly the right thing at the right time.

“C’mere, then,” was all Dan had to say this time, along with lifting the arm that wasn’t currently occupied by his laptop in invitation.

Phil took no time in crawling across the bed to curl up against Dan. He pressed his face into the comforting warmth of Dan’s side, breathing in his familiar scent and closing his eyes. Like this, he could forget that the rest of the world existed, at least for a little while.

Dan, thankfully, knew not to break the silence straight away. He just sat there with his arm around Phil’s shoulder and let the silence sit, comfortingly, between them. Nothing was ever awkward between them – though that, of course, changed when the rest of the world got involved. Phil pressed his face into Dan’s side, nudging him with his face until he got Dan to sit in the most comfortable position for Phil to sprawl across his lap.

He could feel, rather than hear, Dan’s sigh. “Are you quite finished?”

“Almost.” Phil opened his eyes just for long enough to re-arrange Dan’s elbow, and then he settled down with a content nod. “Yeah. Done now.”

“Good for you,” Dan huffed, but Phil could feel the fondness in it. His arm curved over Phil’s side, playing absent-mindedly with the edge of his sleeve while he effortlessly continued scrolling through whatever he was doing on his laptop.

Phil closed his eyes again. This was what he had missed most, in those crazy months touring the world – although even then, he hadn’t really had to _miss_ it. He and Dan had still managed to find little nooks to squirrel themselves away in, so they could cuddle and browse and forget the rest of the world for a little bit. But those moments had been precious few and far between, and always running the risk of being seen by prying eyes. Here, safe in their flat, Phil could finally fully relax.

Until he remembered that _the show was coming out tomorrow,_ and then he was freaking out all over again.

Dan must have felt him tense up, because his hand shifted to properly thread through Phil’s fingers. “You alright?”

“Yeah.” Phil paused. “No. Not at all, actually.”

Dan smoothed his thumb against Phil’s palm, tapping out a rhythm with his other hand. “Pre-show jitters again?”

“Yeah.” Phil pursed his lips, hiding his face in Dan’s stomach, which was soft and there and far too welcoming for its own good.

“I thought it’d be easier, considering it’s just on the internet this time,” Dan thought aloud.

Phil gave an answering shudder. “That’s what makes it _worse_.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah! Think of the wider audience!” Phil shuddered again. “Literally everyone who’s ever been on the internet can access it now. Or will be able to tomorrow.”

“My brain honestly can’t even compute that,” Dan admitted.

“Me neither.” Phil pressed his face back into Dan’s stomach, hiding against him, voice coming out muffled. “Doesn’t stop me freaking out, though.”

Dan gave a small chuckle. “Never would have guessed.” He pushed the laptop away to the end of the bed, wrapping both arms around Phil instead and sliding down until they were a bit more level. Phil was tempted to whine at the loss of Dan’s soft stomach to cuddle against, but then he was being offered Dan’s chest instead, so he pressed his face there and rolled close enough to feel Dan all the way down his body.

Dan’s arms were big enough to fit all the way around Phil’s spine in a long, curving arc, for which Phil would forever be grateful. It allowed him to feel completely safe and protected, and when he closed his eyes, he could imagine that Dan was his barrier to the rest of the world, a shield that weathered any storms thrown at him.

Dan was pretty good for most things, as it turned out.

“I’m quite excited,” Dan added after a moment, his voice rumbling under Phil’s ear.

Phil grunted. “ _You_ always are.”

“Excuse me?”

“I swear, you were always hyperactive and thrilled before every show,” Phil muttered in something close to a whine. He wrapped an arm around Dan’s waist to tug him closer, hiding in the shelter of his cotton pyjama top. “I was there all ready to throw up, and there you were running around like a mad thing ready to take on the world.”

Dan snorted softly, one hand lifting to thread through Phil’s hair. “Yes, well, we balanced out in the end.”

“I guess.” Phil nudged into Dan’s touch with a happy little sigh. “Could do with some of that balancing out right about now.”

“What else am I here for?” Dan joked. He shuffled a bit until Phil opened his eyes with an annoyed huff, meeting Dan’s warm brown gaze dead-on. “It’ll be alright, Phil, you know.”

“I hope so,” Phil answered, and his stomach clenched all over again when he thought about tomorrow. The entire world, finally able to see the show they’d spent literal years working on, tweaking and touching up and adding to until it was a wonderful monster that they’d both conceived and plotted and were now ready to share with everyone.

Was it any wonder he was a little panicked?

Dan brought him back with a gentle poke to the nose, his lips twitching. “Hey. It’ll be fine. I’ve got you.”

“But what if it isn’t?” The words slipped out before Phil could grab them and stuff them back into the dark void they belonged in.

Dan arched a brow. His lips were twitching into that little smirk he had when he was laughing at the world, or at Phil, inside his head, and his fingers reached up to swipe through Phil’s hair again. Phil had never particularly liked his hair, but Dan seemed to have a fascination with it.

“With all due respect, Phil,” Dan pointed out sagely, “Hundreds of thousands of people have already seen it. I think we’ve already been judged.”

Phil’s face scrunched up. “That doesn’t help at _all_!”

“How so?”

“What if they all secretly hated it, and they’ve just been being kind, and tomorrow it’ll be like the Emperor’s New Clothes and suddenly everyone will be judging us and hating us again and there’ll be drama and the internet might break and then we won’t even have a platform anymore—”

“Phil,” Dan ordered, “Stop.”

Phil stopped.

“Breathe.”

Phil drew in a deep breath, and felt his chest expanding and his panic dissipating with it.

“There we go.” Dan was smiling at him, and he was doing that thing where his eyes went all soft and crinkly and it did funny things to Phil’s heart. “You were getting a bit wild behind the eyes there.”

“I’m always wild behind the eyes,” Phil muttered.

Dan snorted. He shifted onto his back, tugging Phil with him until Phil was collapsed fully against his chest. Phil closed his eyes, breathed him in. He had Dan. Everything was going to be ok, because no matter what hellhole they released tomorrow evening, he would always have Dan, and he was fairly certain that between them they could get through any adversity life might feel like throwing in their way.

Unless it was a cereal famine. Phil was fairly sure that neither of them would survive that, and Dan would probably kill him for the last box. Or maybe Phil would kill him first. Either way, neither of them would quite survive.

Dan’s breathing had evened out beneath Phil’s ear. Phil rolled a bit, shuffling around until he could sit up and get a good look at Dan’s sleeping face. He loved watching Dan sleep. The tiny little furrow that seemed to permanently crease Dan’s brow faded at night, until his face was smoother and younger and much more similar to that angry little ball of energy that Phil had first met at a train station all those years ago.

The show was a celebration of all of that, really. Their lives together leading up to this point. Phil was proud of it, and he knew Dan was proud of it, too, and they’d performed it so many times that it was basically part of Phil’s skin at this point. But that just made it _scarier._ It was part of Phil that was going to be visible to the internet, and Phil wasn’t very good at revealing some parts of himself. Dan had always been better at that.

“Phil,” Dan mumbled through almost-closed lips, “Go to _sleep_.”

Whoops. He hadn’t thought he’d been being that obvious. Phil closed his eyes again, laid his head into the crook of Dan’s neck, and curled himself around him like a question mark. He was ok with this. _They_ would always be ok. Phil believed in them more than anything.

A few minutes of silence rested over them both. Dan’s breathing was even again, and Phil had gone quiet, his limbs resting perfectly entwined with Dan’s.

The silence broke a few minutes later.

“Dan.”

A heavy sigh. “Go to _sleep_ , Phil.”

“In a minute. But, Dan.”

“ _What_?”

“You’ll be around when I inevitably freak out again in the morning, right?”

Another heavy sigh, this time accompanied with the rustle of covers and the tightening of a hold. “Yes, you spork.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Now go to _sleep_ , or I swear I’ll slap you so hard.”

Phil chuckled, just once, and closed his eyes, pressing his face back into Dan’s neck. Yeah. Things would be ok if he always had Dan at his side.


End file.
